Avraham Barkai

Avraham Barkai (* 1921 in Berlin as Abraham Becker ) is a German-born Israeli historian and anti-Semitism researchers.

Life

Barkai was born the son of a Torah scribe in Berlin barn area. He lived there as a child with his strictly Orthodox Eastern European Jewish parents. At four years old, his father sent him to his first Torah study. There, he and other boys were taught to read the Hebrew. Although he was born into the faith, so to speak, he turned at an early age from the faith of his father. At age eleven, he made ​​the acquaintance of unemployed communist, began his political development. In 1932, he was at a demonstration witnessed by the police force. Barkai attended from first to last school year Jewish schools. He was largely spared from anti-Semitic violence. About harassment by Nazi teacher he learned only through tales of comrades. Because of an expulsion by the Nazis he had to live from 1935 to 1938 in the Ahava orphanage. The management of the home had Betty Rothschild. Until 1936 he attended the Adass Yisroel - secondary school.

At the request of his parents, Avraham Barkai emigrated on 1 March 1938 to Palestine. His parents, he never looked back, but he was able to find that they have been reported only a few weeks later. In Palestine, he trained as a farmer. Barkai joined the Hashomer Hatzair. He worked for two years with orchards and Marxism -Leninism. Then he was sent to Negba, a company founded by immigrants from Poland Hashomer Hatzair - members of the kibbutz. But already in 1941 left Barkai Negba to build a new kibbutz called Karkur between Tel Aviv and Haifa. There, he met the German -born Shushke also, whom he married in 1947 and with whom he had three children. In Kibbutz Barkai Avraham worked as day laborers in gardens and orchards. Next he took over for a year, the financial responsibility and the contacts with the authorities. From 1940, he was with his wife a member of the kibbutz Lehawot Ha - Bashan, where he worked for 20 years in agriculture and youth education. From 1950 to 1953 he was delegated to Switzerland. There he had a task to complete the educational work with youth. In the spring of 1953 he returned with his family to Karkur and realized that there were conflicts in the kibbutz. The Cold War had poisoned the political atmosphere.

From 1963 Barkai studied history and economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He met with the enrollment difficulties, as he could not finish his high school in Germany and had no corresponding diploma from the School of Agriculture. The Hebrew University but came to meet him and gave him the status of a special undergraduate students. In contrast to the free listeners he was allowed to take exams and submit assignments, and he even received grades. Therefore, he had enrolled in the fields of history and economics. Because of his good grades in the area of ​​history, he received special permission to study as a full-time student on. In the spring of 1967 he completed the final examination for the Bachelor of Arts in Economics. In the summer of 1972 he passed the final examination in history and was able to continue his studies. In 1973/74 to Barkai enrolled at the Hebrew University as a Master's student. The end of 1973 he submitted his doctoral thesis on the economic system of National Socialism at Walter grave. Thus his scientific research on National Socialism and the conducted economic policy began in the Third Reich. From 1967 to 1979 he was a part-time lecturer in economics and economic history at a college. Curiosity about the functioning of the economy in National Socialism was more aroused by the study of economics and their theories than by the German history. 1974 his dissertation he was allowed; his doctor father was Charles Bloch. This suggested that he get in touch with the German historian Werner Jochmann in Hamburg connection. In the Hamburg archive he found useful sources for his work. In addition to that Jochmann also organized several discussions with competent scientists. Barkai also held talks with prominent people from the Nazi period. These were important sources for his forthcoming thesis.

In 1977 he received his doctorate from the University of Tel Aviv on The Economic System of National Socialism. , The historical and ideological background from 1933 to 1936 in which he presented the economic policies in the early years of the Third Reich as a consistent system dar. In 1988 an expanded until 1945 new edition of the investigation. Furthermore, Barkai wrote a standard work on the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, the largest association German Jews in 1893 until 1938. Both works, he became internationally known in the art.

Barkai he conducted research at the Jerusalem Leo Baeck Institute and worked for the Research of Yad Vashem. He also wrote individual studies on German-Jewish history in the 19th century, German Jews to emigrate to the United States and over Nazism. He is a member of the Deutsche Bank in 1997, founded by the Commission of Historians for research into the history of Deutsche Bank during the Nazi period and also conducts research at the Institute for Economic and Social History at the Free University of Berlin. In March 2003 he received an honorary doctorate from this.

Works (selection)

• The economic system of National Socialism. The historical and ideological background 1933-1936. Cologne 1977.
• Jewish minority and industrialization. Demographics, occupations and income of Jews in West Germany from 1850 to 1914. Tübingen 1988.
• The economic system of National Socialism. Ideology, theory, policy 1933-1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-596-24401-3.
• From boycott to " dejudification ": the economic struggle for existence of the Jews in the Third Reich from 1933 to 1943. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988 ( English 1989).
• Nazi Economics: Ideology, Theory, and Policy. New Haven Yale University Press 1990.
• Branching Out: German - Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1820 to 1914. New York 1994.
• Hope and doom: Studies on German - Jewish history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Hamburg 1998.
• ( with Paul Mendes - Flohr ) Emergence and Destruction: 1918-1945 ( = German - Jewish History in Modern Times Vol 4. ). Munich 2000.
• Wehr you! The Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith from 1893 to 1938. Munich 2002.
• Oscar Wassermann and the German bank: banker in difficult times. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52958-5.
• Experiences and something thought: Memories of an independent historian. Wallenstein, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0902-9.